squishyx

For a guy "killing this team" he is tied for 5th in team scoring and is half the reason we got a point tonight.

Or we could bench him because he is bound to regress to the mean on some contrived stat or something.

But if Obama pulls off the miracle and wins, I won't cry foul. I'll just call for the impeachment proceedings.

I was shocked that Obama won this election. I give a lot of credit to the boot-licking mainstream media, which has taken orders from the White House the last four years. It's a scandal.

Well that didn't take too long.

Still, it's a humiliating loss for the Republican Party, which needs to communicate the greatness of conservatism to Latinos, women, blacks. The effort needs to be much better. Having a dynamic, conservative presidential candidate is a must. Romney was all over the place in this campaign, and his "move to the center" in the last couple weeks of the campaign was blatant pandering. It's not to be respected, and people see right through it. The solution is not to move to the center. Move to the right, especially on fiscal issues.

Republicans are now 1 in 6 in the last few elections in terms of winning the popular vote. Quite frankly your advice is wrong. What they need is a strong center-right candidate that people can relate too that doesn't make disparaging remarks about those very minorities you are wishful about currying. Self deportation, binders full of women, the 47% comment, moving further to the right is not going to win you any more votes.

Boy, it's amazing that after billions of dollars spent in the campaign, we end up with exactly where we were before: Obama, Democrat Senate and Republican House. I don't envision a grand bargain ... maybe a patchwork deal just to avoid the "fiscal cliff." It doesn't even matter if they make a big deal ... the full implementation of Obamacare will sink us, and the debt will rise and rise. God help us if it all comes crashing down.

Obama and Harry Reid's olive branch after the election was such a crock after the dirty campaign that they ran. The Bain Capital ads that attacked Romney's character, Reid's unfounded accusation of Romney being a tax cheat ... those two can go fvck themselves. I have never seen anything like it. It made swiftboating look like a sea cruise.

And yet, more money was dumped into attacking Obama then Romney, 329million dollars went towards Obama opposition ads vs 97m for Romney (via opensecrets). Attack ads work, that's why they do them, and it's pretty funny to see you accuse the democrats playing dirty tactics and then not nick republicans for doing the same thing... only on a much grander scale.

He didn't end any wars.  He tried to extend the war in Iraq but wasn't able to so the troops came home at the deadline that was set by Bush.  He has tripled the amount spent on the war in Afghanistan, I wouldn't really call that winding it down.  He also started wars in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan.

http://mises.org/daily/5231

I said we would likely disagree, you asked for merit and I gave you my reasons.

As far as spending in Afghanistan, his surge there was going to be expensive, I don't really agree with it and would have preferred if he just brought the troops home now. But there is a deadline and given his track record I believe he will live up to his promise in that regard.

Lol, typical liberal bias foaming at the mouth. My point was simple that Obama has done nothing to merit a re-election the last four years and you pull out this crap.

He saw us out of a recession, ended 1 war, winded down another, refocused our special forces attention that eventually killed bin laden, cut taxes for working families, passed a universal healthcare law, I liked the auto bailout and I understand the reasoning behind continuing TARP, he ended don't ask don't tell, showed that we can support democracy abroad without committing troops on the ground and kept this nation relatively safe

I don't agree with everything he did, I don't agree with some aspects of what he accomplished, and I certainly don't think he did any of that by himself. Obviously you probably don't like most of the things on that list, or down play how much he had a roll in. But there's your "merit" from my point of view, overall I like the way the country has been moving the last 4 years and that's why I voted for him for another term.

I poo-poohed Nate Silver's prediction.  Boy was I wrong.

The only quibble I still have with his type of analysis is that he put a percentage chance on a one time event.  I mean, I could put a 99 percent chance that aliens will land on earth tomorrow.  If I'm wrong, I could just say that the one percent scenario is what played out.

Yes but that's focusing on one aspect on his analysis. The fact is while we can't know if his "odds of Obama winning" was correct, we can look at how he preforms on swing states and start to look at the trend. He went 9/9 last night, and I think 7/8 in 2008 (the other calls were fairly trivial). He also called the popular vote, and did fairly well at the state levels too (although I haven't examined them all). It's not just about the odds he had Obama winning, it's about his overall accuracy and that his model has merit, a lot more then the supposed pundits who go off their gut.

Cherry picked? I used the poll that was released today. Every news organization is reporting this poll.

I guess if I used a month old poll that would have been less cherry picked.

6 major polls are released daily as well as other scattered ones, it's more accurate to view them in aggregate. But, like I said if you were going to try and pick a poll that favored your guy, a few days ago gall up had him +7 and still has him +3, so I guess my point is less about you cherry picking to be disingenuous and more about "who cares one what given poll says".

...........and this is why Romney wins in a landslide because it's about the economy.

Obama's basically on track for a second term, so get the "voter intimidation", "liberals lied and cheated", "mass liberal media conspiracy", "dirty Chicago politics" cards ready for all the QQ that's about to come our way in two weeks.

For my part I'll say it now, if Romney wins I won't complain or cry foul.

How on earth do people think Romney is going to win in a landslide? I understand that's a subjective term but I doubt many conservatives thought Obama's 10 million voter edge in 2008 was a landslide, and Romney will be lucky to win by half that.

Obama loves shooting down Romney's budget while neglecting the fact he hasn't come close to passing one in four years. Romney should have made a bigger deal of  the blunder with Russia, half of the country probably didn't understand it.

If Obama proposed Romney's budget as his own he would have been torn a new one from fiscal conservatives screaming from the high heavens about  the biggest tax grab on the rich in our nations history, about redistribution, class warfare, and mostly how it doesn't even get prom point A to point B, "there is no free lunch" lecture.

Romney is promising a revenue neutral budget that lowers taxes 20% across the board and does so by limiting deductions, but not the popular ones that people like. Somehow this 500b annual cut in taxes will be paid for by who? magic gnomes? if the rich are paying for it (and they can't because there doesn't enough enough deductions to begin with) then it's a massive tax increase on them. Socialism!

It deserves to be mocked and ridiculed because when asked how he is going to pay for it he can't cite specifics and just says to "throw out a number" on a deduction cap (17, now its 25, maybe tomorrow it will be -3, who knows).

I don't think Obama's plan is great by any means, but by all reasonable accounts it's plausible that it can pass congress, and it's actually in line with math.

You are again avoiding the principal. Do you honestly fear that you're going to be the victim of a mass shooting in the US or Europe?  Do you avoid discussing the fact that you're Jewish and pro-choice specifically for fear that some Christian Fundamentalist, White Supremacist or militiaman is going to murder you?  Do you at all change your behavior?  I seriously doubt that you do. On the other hand, would you take special precautions if you went to Pakistan for actual fear of being the victim of an attack by Islamic terrorist?  You'd be a fool not to.

For starters I'm pro-life, I know I have become the stand-in for "liberal democrat" since most of the true liberals have basically left this page and that relatively I am more "left" then most of the posters who actually post here, but I consider myself very moderate overall.

Would I be a little cautious travelling to Pakistan? Sure, not because they are Muslim but because America and by association Americans aren't terribly popular there right. But you are cherry picking hotbed countries because I would have no problem travelling to Indonesia (the most populated Muslim country on the planet).  

Also, beyond the rarity with which mass shootings actually take place in the US and Europe, the vast majority of those have no religious or political motivation.  They're usually the result of mental illness or personal grudges.  Those are phenomena that do merit discussion, and actually are discussed extensively here and elsewhere.  There's just very little discussion of Christian fundamentalist terrorism because it rarely happens, or rarely enough that it does not effect the day-to-day lives of nonbelievers or blasphemers anywhere in the world.

Again you are trying to castigate them off into the crazy bin and say "well they are just crazy nothing we can really do about it" and that very well may be true. But why are you not willing to extend that same reasoning to extremists in the middle-east? You don't think you have to be just a little bit crazy to believe the propaganda, to accept the indoctrination to believe that hijacking a plane killing thousands of people is justified? I am not arguing that they are generating far more violence then other religious groups, but there are geo-political reasons for why it's occurring in that area. The problem I keep trying to re-enforce is not that they are Muslims, it's that they are extremists.

Yes, I am saying that this is something that is LARGELY or maybe even OVERWHELMINGLY, but not entirely, unique to terrorists and fundamentalists of the Islamic persuasion.  To the extent that any of this stuff happens in any other part of the world, it's usually a lone nut or an isolated phenemon.  The fact that you don't really fear for your physical well-being from the religious right in this country, but you would if you lived in Pakistan, makes the point so obvious.

No Catholics rioted in the street or killed people over Piss Christ.  People who convert from ANY other religion in the world (even Scientology) do not face death sentences. If you heard that a suicide bomb went off in a crowded market place you would make an assumption about who the perpetrator was, and 99 percent of the time you'd be correct.

I don't make any assumptions, that's a pretty dangerous line of thought to have. What does that get you anyway? Do you feel a little better every time the gunman prays in a mosque instead of a church? Does it justify this small view of the world where it's a "us vs them" mentality"? What did you instantly think of Anders Breivik, or James Holmes, or One Goh, or Seung-Hui Cho, or Jerry Sandusky, or Michael Page? When it turned out they weren't Muslims they just fall into the "crazy" bucket that we don't talk about.

A little girl was tragically shot for speaking out against oppression. She's a hero, and she was a hero before she was attacked. I hope the shooter is captured and put to justice, as well do, that's the thing that goes without saying. But that doesn't change anything, our country is averaging 20 mass shootings every year. We've got our own problems with extremism right here at home.

Without taking any sense of proporionality into consideration, you just put your head in the sand.  Not only is it intellectually dishonest, it doesn't do very much for the groups that are overwhelmingly the victims of these atrocities.

Oh please. You make this entire thread basically to provoke the left and now you want to complain about intellectual dishonesty? And our "commenting about politics on a sports team message board" does nothing either way to the victims of those atrocities.

Terrible things happen every day, for whatever reason people on this board are only interested in highlighting the sh!tty things that Muslims do. And had you just done that, I wouldn't have said a peep (although secretly wondered why many of our domestic incidents don't get coverage). But no, you had to try and make a point to say "wow look how terrible some of Muslims are, everyone should stop complaining about Christian extremism". Well you know what? Compared to the Nazi's the terrorists of today are pretty mild, so I guess we shouldn't complain about them either right?

No, they are both terrible comparisons, and we should be rooting out extremism in every form we can find it.

That's really bad moral equivalency, even by moral equivalency standards.  The guy you're referring to was mentally ill, either bipolar or schizophrenic.

  I just have to roll my eyes, same as you would if I stated that Obama supporters are just as prone to violence as Taliban primitives, based on that women who shot a bunch of people at the U. Alabama Huntsville.

The religious right in this country does not do things like this.  You know this of course.  Otherwise I would hope you actually do something about it besides commenting about politics on a sports team message board.

If your post had just been about this guys killing I wouldn't have said a word. But it seems like you are trying to make the argument that since there are terribly deranged brainwashed terrorists, or extremists or zealots (insert whatever word that JL will accuse me of not calling them) in the middle east who commit unthinkable atrocities, that somehow we are anymore immune to such lunacy and our "extreme" wing is lessened by compassion. Maybe it's more prevalent in that part of the world right now, but 1st nations are still suffering from people who are too far to one end of the crazy wagon.

Why is it when something terrible happens over there it's because he is a Muslim, or because he hates US or freedom but when something happens here "it's just a crazy guy ignore him".

Squishy loves to defend the Islamofascists.

Nope, just consistently denouncing all forms of extremism.

You changed my "we can't know" to me saying, "Romney was taken out of context".  Those are 2 completely different statements.

In fact I specifically said "I didn't say Romney was taken out of context" and you changed it to me saying "he was somehow taken out of context"

I wasn't changing anything, I was pointing out the hypocrisy of questioning the context on an event A, where we have plenty of evidence to establish said context, and event B where someone literally had their words sniped out of the middle of a sentence.

And your defense of the latter is basically "well it fits his MO so I'm inclined to believe it".

I didn't say Romney was taken out of context, I said we can't know for sure without the full answer.  Just as with you saying I was implying the Romney clip was edited together when I didn't, you need to stop assuming what I think

Don't get all victim-y on me, you said

I have listened to it. His answer is cut off. We have no idea what the rest of his answer was.

We have no idea if the clip was complete enough to provide full context because it cuts his answer off.

so I think it's a fair assumption that you are questioning the context around Romney's statement.

Quite frankly I still don't know if you do, what I can tell is you want to give Mitt as much of the benefit of the doubt as possible and nothing to Obama because it fits your narrative.

I wasn't saying Romney didn't mean it, I'm saying we don't know.  I'm fine if he did mean it, but we've seen multiple other comments talked about needing to be put in context and here we have an anonymous recorder missing pieces of audio that may provide more context.

I think Obama also meant "You didn't build that" to mean your business, no matter how some people try to say he meant "that roads" and such.  That's another instance where people say that context of what he said later may have put his earlier comment into a different context, even if I disagree with them that the context changed.

I don't know how you can't see the obvious double standard in how the media vetted and presented the 2 clips.

So, you think Obama, who spent the lead in minute talking about how successful people had help somewhere along the way before saying:

"Somebody invested in roads and bridges, if you got a business, that[sic] you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen".

this Is him saying you didn't build your business... but when Mitt spends 3 minutes talking about how the 47% won't vote for him because they just want hand outs and wont take responsibility for their lives, that he was somehow taken out of context.

It's going to be a long election season because you used to be the rationale conservative.